The invention is applicable to manufacturing devices such as branch couplings for flexible tubes or pipes, in particular hoses based on rubber, on plastomers, or on elastomer thermoplastic, and it is also applicable, under certain conditions, to manufacturing such couplings for tubes or pipes that are somewhat more rigid. The invention also extends to manufacturing devices for fixing such tubes or pipes to endpieces, and to manufacturing branches, tapping points, or bundles of ducts in such materials, without the above list being exhaustive. The fields in which the invention may be implemented and where it may be necessary to couple to tubes or pipes together, include for example: building, home appliances, and the vast field of transportation-related industries, in particular the car industry.
In the car industry, rubber-based hoses, and particularly but not exclusively those placed between the engine and the radiator to make up the cooling circuit for the engine, and similarly the bundles for conveying various different fluids (hydraulic or pneumatic fluids such as brake liquid, fuel, etc . . . ) frequently include branching points that serve either to establish secondary circuits from a main circuit such as stub ducts, branch links, etc . . . , or else to enable control and/or monitoring functions to be performed such as measuring flow rate or temperature by means of probes, tapping points, etc. Such branch points, referred to below overall by the very general term "couplings or the like" have long been manufactured by engaging the tubes or pipes to be coupled on an insert of appropriate shape and then fixing said tubes or pipes to the insert by means of a very wide variety of types of clamping collar. That long-established technique has progressively been overtaken by crimping techniques as described in DE-3 729 057 or by techniques in which rubber or plastic is overmolded, as explained in FR-A-2 549 196 or FR-A-2 610 073, for example. Although the more recent techniques give satisfaction and enable devices to be obtained that are in widespread use, they can nevertheless sometimes be too expensive and/or too difficult to implement in certain configurations, when the technique is crimping; or they require manufacturing time that is relatively long (when overmolding rubber); or they make use of manufacturing techniques that can be complicated, as when overmolding with common plastics.